Apotheosis 379

[JayRay]

"Then said he unto me,
Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus
saith the Lord GOD; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon
these slain, that they may live." -- Ezekiel 37:9

"For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.." -- Psalms 37:9

"Look!
It is Solomon’s carriage, escorted by sixty warriors, the noblest of
Israel, all of them wearing the sword, all experienced in battle,
each with his sword at his side, prepared for the terrors of the night. King Solomon made for himself the carriage; he made it of wood from Lebanon." Song of Songs 3:7-9

"By
harnessing the inner workings of ressurection, like our lord Jesus
Christ did with Lazarus, our outdated and feeble ideals of Last Rites
would become unnecessary. We, with the everlasting power of the almighty
at our hand, can simply bring the dead back to live so that they may
attone for their sins, and then begin anew their walk in the everlasting
graces of God" -- Writs of Luciferian Society, Naples Italy, page 379

O Myriads of immortal Spirits, O Powers
Matchless, but with th' Almighty, and that strife
Was not inglorious, though th' event was dire,
As this place testifies, and this dire change
Hateful to utter: but what power of mind
Foreseeing or presaging, from the Depth
Of knowledge past or present, could have fear'd,
How such united force of Gods, how such
As stood like these, could ever know repulse?

- John Milton, Paradise Lost

APOTHEOSIS 379

Abstract: A seminary student gets placed in the frontlines in the battle of good versus evil, in others, as well as himself

Genre: Horror - Supernatural
Engine: RMXP

Story
In ancient tomes of the exorcism rites, there were not only ways to remove a malignant spirit or demon from a person, but on re-uniting one's body with his spirit, allowing him breath renewed. In the sixteenth century inquisitions and reformation of those ancient writs, the idea of placing a spirit within a man was deemed blasphemous, and could only be done by the Son of Man or a divine...

Heretics by the dozens who professed the idea that they could bring people forth from the dead to heal their sins were burned at the stake, and this knowledge for the most part was banished... brief mentions of it can be found in the Malleus Malificarium, but for the most part, the knowledge was lost to the dusts of time...

However, here, in the thriving city of Milton, an esoteric commune has sought for centuries, in one form or another, to open the door between this world and the next, the limbo that awaits those who are not yet passing across, and complete a union between that body and sprit. It was less than one year ago, that the first of these rituals met with success, as the commune publicly claimed to have brought a small girl, named Clara, back from the dead. The
public scoffed at the idea, blatently called it a hoax, and moved on... This commune, known as "The Right Hand Of God" believed that by opening the doors through the prayers and incantations of their forefathers, one could navigate through the three earthly realms, the seven heavens, and the nine hells...

However, we as humanity always think so vainly of ourselves... and as the Right Hand prepared their ceremony to bring forth the dead to reunite them with the spirits, they opened a door... and what came through... did NOT want to reunite, did not want to be absolved of sin... When the spell occured, and I DO refer to it as a spell, as an incantation or prayer simply doesn't do its physical manifestations justice... the dead DID rise... as feral beasts, without spirit, spiritually still dead, yet not physically...

On the other side, the spirits gained just a hint of physicality, phsyically no more, but spiritually very much real... and able to affect things on the physical world in great abundance. And thus on Easter Sunday, as children went around hunting eggs, and people dressed in their Sunday best, the skies darkened, the ground stirred and tore, and a dozen generations of the slain and dead rose back, along with their spritual counterparts, rushing forth back upon the world from all of their places...

Now, as if this wasn't bad enough... The Right Hand of God, perplexed by their failure to contain that which they
themselves unleashed... plan to force a union between man and spirit, propelling one man, known only as "The Bishop" into his ambitious place amongst the divine hierarchy.... in a mythical incantation known as the
Apotheoisis, wishing to take his seat at... the RIGHT HAND of GOD, as the master of the afterlife... and setting off the full swing of the black sands of oblivion for the tiny town of Milton...

Setting
Set in Milton, Nevada... population of 66 and an elevation of 77 feet above sea level, Apotheosis 379 follows the life of five seperate survivors as they struggle to make sense of, well, for the best terminology, scenes of biblical apocalypse. The Dead have risen from their graves, wherever they may be, in such a localized setting that they took the town by storm, forcing many to lock themselves within, or feel the sharp and feral rending of the beasts. On top of that, as if that wasn't bad enough, spirits, forces of malignancy have besieged the town as well, even moving through the solid barricades used to hold back the hordes to antagonize and feast upon them...

You, as a former seminary student, felt the calling of your faith weaken due to earthly desires... namely a girl... You wanted so much to fall in love with this girl, but you knew that once you took the cloth, she could never be with you... You struggled with your faith for weeks, but in the end, resolved yourself to let the girl of your dreams know that you had decided to take a higher calling. She lived in Nevada, in the tiny little desert valley town of Milton... and the voyage was long... at night... with the long stretches of night... once can get tired easily... one can begin
to see things... You flashed your eyes back open on the desert road, to see a form, a form of a small girl. Your instincts overcompensated, swerving your car off the road, and into a rock gully... you lived... but... rested in your OWN limbo... for several months... at St. Nicholas Medical Center, the only hospital in eighty miles, and the staple of
the town.

Characters
Luke Hollis - A seminary student whose study of everything from demonology to the writs of exorcism WOULD
make him ideal for this setting, if he hadn't bumped his head, suffered a coma for a few months, and is living with an intermittent amnesia...

Sara Shelton - Hailing from a long line of ranchers and rough riders, she's the one who learned quickly on that the 'zombies' can be re-killed, and that usually shotgun blasts do the trick. Otherwise, dynamite is equally effective, if not more so... She's hotheaded, quick to anger, and has no problem with killing someone to save her own skin.

Bobby Rallis - The town librarian... bookworms DO have a chance in situations like these... but... only if they are extremely careful.

LuAnn Marsailes - This former prostitute really doesn't have a chance, but... man is she a clepto... She could probably tell you were every key, every safe, every resource in the town is, as she most probably has either
been arrested or detained for trying to steal it... Her knowledge is crucial...

(NEW) Ron Tutor - This ham radio operator subscribed to every conspiracy theory on the planet, calling in to midnight paranormal radio shows on a constant basis with talk of shadow people, Area 51, Heaven and Hell, psychic abilities, and more. Labeled the town crackpot, he was the last to be believed from the outside world when he
professed Hell on Earth, and the first to understand the truth, save for Luke.

Elder Moss - Evangelist, Preacher, and head of the Right Hand and the owner of Milton Used Cars, Elder Moss was the man responsible for the "Milton Miracle" a year ago, when the young girl Clara Singleton was, by all recollection of the people around, raised from the dead, from a lifeless slab of cold flesh to hugging her mother. This plunged the Elder into instant notoriety among his people, and where he is now, as this calamity befell the town, is a secret shared by only a few.

Sister Magdalena - A vicious and cold woman, the highest ranking member of the Right Hand of God, she was once the principal of St. Nicholas Parochial school before... this happened.

Elder Mastelson - Not your typical church 'elder' per say, this masked man wields a bible in one hand and a machete in another, considers himself the guardian or paladin of the Right Hand.

Deacon Jeremiah Hardacre - In the outside world he was nothing but a short order cook at the Bent Arrow Diner, but
under the tutilage of Elder Moss he grew more and more mad, losing himself in the world of the Right Hand. He now believes he is the Purger, a divine angel set to burn down the infidels, toast them to ash, and sacrifice them to the cleansing fire. He's used to cooking steaks well done, let's just say that...

LILITH - Yeah, you heard me right... Lilith, the mythical original wife of Adam... yeah, she don't like you for some reason... and for some reason she REALLY likes the Right Hand, but I really can't spoil WHY for you until the game actually is played.

Credits
CCOA - the UMS is my Bread and Butter...
Ryex - for the Front View Asan'Tear Battle System, also very nice
Moghunter - For the menu system which I will be totally re-skinning
Sephiroth Spawn, Near Fantastica, and Wachunga - SDK
Sephiroth Spawn again - for Materia System, which I will be changing along with
the weapons system, to have materia be different weapons, with a
different ICON for each "materia" MCGaladtogel - The genius who created the FPLE and H-Mode 7, both of which are vital for me in this project.

Screen Shots









The reason the character is the default fighter character, is because I am still working to render the taller human model for the game yet. I want to get at least four maps built before tacking the character sprites, the menu systems, and the battle systems...


Features
- Completely original art and graphics. Not one RTP pixel, material, or record in the database. All original
sound effects, animations, 'skills'.

- Rendered sprites in isometric perspective, to align themselves with a 3d-ish isometric H-Mode 7, and
other sprites rendered in front back and side for FPLE mode.

- EXP for solving puzzles, not just for winning battles.

- Animated and Rendered Front View Battlers at the same size as traditional front view battlers.

- Isometric Static events to give the appearance of 3d to some non-traditional events (Water towers, Shanty frames, etc... All events are set for 8-directions)

-non-infinite ammo suppy ("materia' that makes BOOM uses Ammo Points, materia that is physical does not) - Ammo can be scouted out but must be used sparingly...

- Classes are professions, meaning that some clues aren't unlocked unless your lead character is the profession that can unlock them.

- Multidimensional maps... A map may not be the same map when you return. After you unlock certain clues, you can travel to secret passages (As you travel in any building, you need to understand that there are actually possibly 3 or more versions of that building.... as your character can actually ,if he utters the incantation correctly,
move between the veils of the worlds...As in... moving from the physical world to the etherial or the shadows, or even to the formation of it in one of the nine hells or in one of the seven heavens... Sometimes you actually need to go through these places to obtain shortcuts... as this game gets more and more difficult. You could need
to re-enter a specific place four, five, who KNOWS how many times, just because some new pathway is uncovered... Good luck, this is a labyrinth of 'Biblical' proportions...

- Biblical Overtones - This game employs several biblical overtones, codes, and puzzles relating to not only the
common canon of the Bible, but Apocryphal books, old books on angels, demons, even some Mesopotamian and Babylonian legends to solidify an intellectual game.... this one's probably best to the adults, not the kids... For instance: "But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and terror struck those who saw them." Revelation 11:11 (perfect zombie verse, and very well may be a code to unlock a safe somewhere...)

[JayRay]

Well, I decided to take a pause to conquer the Menu System. I have decided to do a massive re-skin/re-tool of Moghunter's Custom Menu System, which works perfectly with HMode , btw, and so far I've also been looking at adding the bio page as well as a weapon augmentations page. Someone on chat last night thought I was ripping all my resources, and I want to assure you that everything graphicwise I am putting together never appeared in another RM game. Wanted to also show off the first face screen of the main hero...

[MetalRenard]

"Someone on chat last night thought I was ripping all my resources"
Guilty. :P
Like I said, I thought that because I saw Arshes and that usually means 0 original graphics. I'm glad you're doing it all yourself though, it makes the game so much more interesting. :)

[JayRay]

lol, I tried to keep it anonymous, but yeah , lol... getting ready to do my spriting now, going to probably go with 8x8 on the character sprites (8 frames of animation for 8 directions... or at least enough to have my 1-player live benchmark demo.

[JayRay]

UPDATE: Right now I am working on trying to figure out the best course of action for stationary objects like schoolbuses, abandoned cars, oil tanks, that sort of thng... trying to decide whether to model them in-game as heightmapped objects or try to create 8-direction event graphics.

[JayRay]

The retexturing project is working well, and I've gained a new appreciation for texture makers everywhere... I've also built an event system for player transfers, allowing for transferring from one map to the other cleanly and without putting down 32 events on the borders of my map. Other map tranfer engines like Map array work really well, but as I'm concerned about H-Mode 7's compatibility with those scripts, I think it's better to go this route. Also, DERVVulfman wanted a new screenie...





Now of course, as you can see, my character placeholder is still there, my characters look to be about 32 pixels high and around 80 pixels tall each, and I think my next screen shot will be showing Luke, the hero character, along with maybe a couple others.

[MetalRenard]

Looking awesome!

[JayRay]

Looking awesome!

Thanks alot, that means a lot... new screenie... proof that a HM7 game creator's work is never done...

[JayRay]

While spriting, I decided to throw out a render of one of my characters holding one of the weapns of the game, the Redemption AK47

[JayRay]

Well, as you may or may not know, I've firmly decided to use the old Asan'Tear Animated DBS for my battle system, and have begun working on the hard work of creating my guy for that system with all of his poses and such...

Idle with fists... As my version will actually change the battler depending on what weapon he has equipped, I have decided on a new animation for each one. Here's our Padre, Luke, showing his boxing stance...


Each frame will be faster in the actual gameplay.